


Half Sunk a Shattered Visage Lies

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Ultima (Video Games)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-07 23:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20984153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: The Avatar returns to Britannia following their sojourn to Serpent Isle, but even in a time of what appears to be idyllic peace, something seems... off.





	Half Sunk a Shattered Visage Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FireEye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/gifts).

> I tried to take "something that delves into the deeper horror of the games" to explore some of the elements of _Ultima Underworld II_ and _Serpent Isle_ I found most unnerving.

It was a long road back to Britannia, and it seemed a foregone conclusion that once she set foot on that green jewel of an island again, she would not return to Earth. Having been the Stranger from Another World for so very long and on so many worlds, she could no longer imagine what it was to be bound to the place of one’s nativity. It was clear now that her home lay within what had once been Sosaria.

In the days that followed, much was spoken of the feasts, of the celebrations, of the joy of birds slowly returning to the air and the quiet and gentle races awakening from their long sleep. She had been told there was sunshine on the granite streets of the capital when they rode down them and that she seemed on her white palfrey a gem set in the crown of the world, her three companions marching by her side. In verse and in song it was recorded that they crowned her Savior of Britannia for the tenth time, for all that she could never be the savior of that far flung desolation in lands once named for danger and despair.

Months passed, and the Guardian receded from memory while she dwelt in the quiet splendor of the castle. Years passed, and Britannia lapsed into a time of peace while she sat in the cool of grey-green courtyards. Lord British decided the country had endured the rule of one ruler long enough, and she was crowned at last a queen to what was reported to be a general and public jubilation. They persisted there together then, the four of them, much as they always had. Iolo was appointed as court musician and Master of Ceremonies; Shamino, her chief advisor who served as intermediary to the Great Council; Dupre, of course, came to be Captain of the Guards.

It seemed an almost idle life, to be a hero made monarch, and she found that the matters of state largely attended to themselves. Her companions—the Three as they soon became known—were able to handle most of her petitioners and the balance of the royal bureaucracy. Often she walked through the long corridors of what still was termed Castle British, looking with an almost wistful nostalgia at the trophies of victories long past: stones and runes and ancient swords whose purposes she had all but forgotten. In particular, for reasons she never could quite fathom, her eyes were drawn often to an ornate hunting horn, carved out of what appeared to be bone. It hung within the keep’s small library, and she could never remember having sounded it.

When she touched it, one day, she thought it had a coldness to it that left its chill with her, wicking away the warmth from her fingertips.

_Seek the horn…_

The voice whispered through her thoughts for but an instant before falling silent, and she suddenly recalled the sound of shattering and the shock of her own heart beating out of time as something fell with a thud to the ice beneath her feet.

Later, in the midst of the banquet hall, she absent-mindedly asked Iolo how fared his wife. He turned to her, a fleeting look of astonishment playing across his gaunt features.

“My wife?” he asked.

“Thy wife, old friend?” she repeated, confused.

He stared at her as though she might well have asked how fared his pet manticore or how went the fortunes of his talking horse.

“I have not been married for quite a while now, milady,” he said finally and firmly. “With all that must be done for thee and for the state, I doubt I should marry again soon.”

Her brow furrowed, for she thought these few words out of step with all she could ever recall of him. Before she could make any remark to this effect, however, he insisted that she repose herself and hear a song. The day had been long, he said, and it was not good to dwell too long in the heaviness of thought.

He played something, some strain unfamiliar to her about a lost people and the monuments that they had left. It was rather melancholy for all he assured her it would set her at ease.

* * *

Shamino drew her aside on what seemed the week next, telling her that the good bard Iolo had taken upon himself a journey to the south and that he would be absent some time from their company. She frowned a little to hear it, and wondered why a man she had relied upon for so long and through so many perils should leave her without a farewell. She considered that it might behoove a queen to demand more courtesy of her counselors, but quickly put the notion out of mind. There were none dearer to her than they, and she was loath to do anything to bring them to strife.

She retreated again to the library when it grew dark and tried her utmost to ignore the horn that hung there. Taking a tome at random from the dust-covered shelves, she thought to lose a moment to the pleasures of verse, even if she had nobody to sing them. As she opened what turned out to be a copy of Gaant’s _House of the Unicorn_, she heard the crack of brittle parchment and saw a soft snow of flaking vellum fall to the floor below. 

The book was ruined, mildewed and brittle to the point of being unsalvageable.

She felt her brow furrow as she set it aside and plucked another volume from the shelf. It was in much the same condition, its leaves swollen and black with a decay she would not expect to see on anything that hadn’t been stowed in a cellar or buried in the earth a decade. Increasingly unsettled, she looked to another book, and then another, until the floor was a tumble of rot and broken pages and she realized the whole of the library was blighted.

It was a wonder that she did not gag, for the whole room now had the sickly smell of barren fields given over to bloodmoss. She sat, shaken, on the floor. A tattered fragment of poesy, only two lines of which were unmarred, caught her eye.

_On thy neck warrior,_  
_Thou shall not abandon me._

They meant nothing to her. As she folded the scrap in her fingers, however, she could hear the voice that might speak them: something lilting and inhuman as the sound of a glass played with water.

When she grew conscious of the light step of Shamino’s approach, she realized that she must look quite the madwoman sitting as she did, surrounded by books fallen about and fallen apart like so many soldiers on a battlefield. Standing up, she let drop the slip of parchment and watched as the man approaching her grew pale as a corpse.

“Your majesty,” he whispered. “What is all this?”

“I know not,” she replied softly. “I came in search of something to read and found everything ruined.”

He seemed taken aback, looking at the wreck of material before him and then looking back at her. Something in his saturnine countenance seemed to betray a growing sense of panic.

“You should rest, milady,” he said with a calm firmness. “There is no use in staying amidst all this. I’ll send somebody to put it to rights.”

She looked at him, feeling that there was some sign or symbol in his expression that she was meant to read. Her gaze seemed to pass through him as if he were nothing, and she found herself for a moment staring to the emptiness of the stone edifice in which they both lay enclosed.

She refrained—with good reason she thought—from asking if he knew aught of the insanity of kings and queens.

* * *

When word reached her that Shamino too had departed from her company for a while—some bureaucratically stipulated conference or another—she felt it would do little good to pry further into the matter or to make any complaint. The sense of unrest, of wrongness, clung to her more and more now that she was all but alone, embowered within the heart of the capital with but one friend for company.

It occurred to her that—perhaps—she ought leave the confines of the castle. Perhaps these odd fits and fancies might be soothed by leaving to once more make some sojourn or expedition among those she now ruled. It seemed, now that she thought about it, a long time since she had been anywhere other than her own chambers and halls.

She spoke of the matter when next she saw Dupre, who patrolled those halls with a relentless determination that superseded all else. She realized, looking upon him, that they had not spoken in a long time.

“I think, mayhap, we ought wait until the others return,” he said in response to her question.

“And when will that be?”

His features darkened, as if she had said something to grieve him. Absent-mindedly she fidgeted with the few remnants of things that had been rescued from the ruined and now locked library—ornaments and baubles mostly—which had been spread out on a long hallway table until they could be moved elsewhere.

"I feel as though there is something that has disquieted you all," she continued cautiously, flicking the spheres of a miniature ornery into motion. "Have I said or done anything to cause this discord?"

"There is nothing, my lady." He turned from her, very clearly affected by some sorrow of which he would not speak. She began to grow irate, wondering anew what secret it was that the world and all her old friends seemed determined to keep from her.

Her attention was drawn once again, to the hunting horn, which had apparently been one of the items salvaged from the library. Thinking a moment, she traced the curves of its handle with the edge of her fingernail, keeping her actual hand from touching it.

And suddenly, there was the scent of smoke and the hiss of flame all around her. Dupre, looking back to her with an expression of shock, seemed to recede into the air itself—his flesh peeling and black, eyes burning with the intensity of live coals as he began to fade. Panicked, she stood up to look for him, and soon found herself running through the corridors of a castle that had no exits. She realized, as she heard the hollow clatter of her footfalls on the stone floors, that she was alone.

She tried to breath deep, to center herself somewhere outside of the fear that seemed to stick to the damp air all around her. She looked for a window to open—to let in some light even if it was only that of the moon. The castle was dark as a tomb. She ran in the direction of her own room and upon arriving, threw open a pair of shutters.

There was nothing there—not night, not even darkness—an absolute nothing. It was as though the Void had perched itself outside her windowsill.

She stopped in wonderment, and recalled that though she stood in halls and chambers said to be her own, she had never seen a candle or torch to cast light upon them. She considered that however long she had reigned, she could not recall the voice or face of any soul who dwelt in the castle save for her companions. In all these years, she could remember nobody—nobody save for the Three.

She sat on the edge of a bed that suddenly felt to her as cold and unyielding as a sepulcher, grimly coming to realize that she had heard this story before. Her thoughts traced themselves back to other worlds on which she had been a stranger, and looking at the instrument that lay heavy in her faint and colorless hands, she recognized that this was no horn one might sound chasing after hinds and foxes.

Her heart seemed to weigh heavy within her breast for all she could not feel it beat. Wandering back into what she had imagined to be the great hall, she found it a wreck of rubble and cobwebs. She stood a moment, and with a resigned solemnity sat down on the fallen stonework she had once taken to be a throne.

What could have possibly brought them to this end? Why had they allowed her to persist in this delusion? She had no stranger to help her remember her own fate, and she had no inkling as to how the dead might lay themselves to rest. Looking down, she wondered that the horn of Rhiannon's mightiest king should fit still to her grasp, spectral and void of substance as it now was.

Although there was no djinn bound to her, although there was no air in her lungs at all now—she had a thought, and set to her lips the Horn of Praecor Loth, that once could shatter buildings and turn back great armies. She did not hear it sound when she made the motion as if to blow it. She did not hear the crash of stone walls. All around her, however, the vacant husk of a castle crashed apart, melting into that emptiness from which she did not expect to emerge.

* * *

When light came back to her, she felt the lurch of her lungs drawing in breath and the weight of her body on the floor. There was the sharp scent of pounded herbs and she saw the flicker of mottled sunlight on the ceiling above her. As she sat up, sweat drenched and shaking, a shout went out, which dissolved into murmurs and then to silence as the black-robed Xenkans milling around her reminded themselves of their vows.

"Hero from Another World," Karnax began, his features brightening as he approached. "We thought you had been lost to us."

"She has a name, you know?" Xenka said acerbically, leaning with one elbow on the pedestal that held her own prophecies. "You should all be glad that fate is stronger than whatever held her in the Void."

She saw the faces of her friends—all save one—press forward, looking greatly relieved. Trying to get to her feet, she gave a weak smile in their direction. They were here, and they were real—flesh and blood free to make its way through the world still. For all that world might be perishing around them, they could still move within it a bit longer.

**Author's Note:**

> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.


End file.
